Filling Forms as a Divorced Person

We as a category do not exist

Hiya!

This is Divorceddoodling in a new avatar. That blog has transitioned into something else, I’ll leave the link at the end of this post in case you’re curious about it. Most of the posts about Divorce remain under the Relationships banner. 

It’s been almost 15 years since my divorce. My outlook has changed since those days of freedom and navigating the world as a newly single person.  I sometimes marvel at how angry and brash I sounded in those early days. Yes, I know I’m judging my younger self but the strange thing is,  I would be as outspoken again. Simply because hardly anyone in India talks about divorce and for me, that’s reason enough to talk about it as much as possible. 

What’s in it for you? Why would you want to read about divorce? 

Well, one of the reasons is to have a community of divorced people. My blog filled that space for a while and it surprised me how many people found solace in it. 

 If you’re divorced yourself you’ll recognise many of the frustrations I write about. Maybe you can find a new way of handling those frustrations even if it is merely a shared sense of community. Because - Tears in Heaven paraphrased reminds us that we don’t belong here in heaven (India). The isolation of being divorced in a society where marriage is a person’s identity and individuality is very real. 

Some of the bumps in the road that divorced people travel are similar to widowed folk. But not all. Because whatever you have to tackle alone is weighed down by the coal-black sacks of judgement and self-righteousness other folks exude. Expect no help because of your single status. The wider community will help a person whose partner has died but not you. You chose to be alone. 

I had a tiny squabble with a Financial Advisor who is helping me sort out a few messes. He filled in a form and blithely ticked ‘Married,’ possibly because my daughters are listed as nominees. I pointed out that he needed to tick ‘Divorced’. There was no such option on the form. No surprise there - who remembers us when forms are being formed (or whatever is the verb for those who dream up forms). I asked him to tick ‘Single’. His reservations were visible in every line of his face. 

I insisted anyway, almost hoping that the powers that be question me about this so that I can point out their own aberration to them. 

Don’t get me started on forms. You know, as a woman you invariably have to write ‘W/o’ which means Wife Of. I’ve had to exhibit stubborn insistence here as well. ‘D/o’ I asked them to write. There is only ’S/o’ they say. Scratch it out and write ‘D/o’ over it. When the printed version arrives, it says my name and W/o - my father’s name. 

Clearly, there’s no place for divorced women in the Great Indian Bureaucracy Jungle. 

No matter, we will keep fighting the bureaucratic battle with the weapons they know best. Filling in forms in triplicate, with all the facts correct and no concessions for the ‘culture’ we women are supposed to safeguard. 

To be quite honest and above board, divorced people aren’t the only ones who feel as if they’re in a Kafka novel because nothing makes sense when it comes to government policies. But we are even more invisible than others. More invisible than women, just plain women, married or single, with properties or without, who pay taxes or who don’t need to.  You can always add your own option in a physical form that doesn’t have your category.  You can write over ’S/o’ with ‘D/o’. What do you do with drop-down menus? 

Raging about bureaucracy I found this thought-provoking quote - 

“Bureaucracies, I've suggested, are not themselves forms of stupidity so much as they are ways of organizing stupidity--of managing relationships that are already characterized by extremely unequal structures of imagination, which exist because of the existence of structural violence.”

― David Graeber, The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy

This looks like an excellent book. The existence of this book made me feel less enraged by the non-inclusion of divorced people in forms (or drop-down menus). 

I’ve found humour (often black and quite biting) to be an invaluable tool against the state of being divorced in India. 

I wonder what it feels like in other countries, where being divorced doesn’t matter very much and the only problem is sometimes feeling lonely. 

I’ll be sending out a newsletter every Wednesday, on the subject of Divorce. 

What would you like me to write about next week?